On a daily basis I work with web-based administration tools that contain unwieldly pulldown menus. In other words, many of them contain several hundred choices, sometimes several thousand.

On a PC in IE 5 or 6, these menus load very quickly. On a Mac in IE 5.1, these menus take forever to load (20-30 seconds).

On PC-IE5/6, clicking on the pulldown menu brings up the options immediately in a scrollable window.

On Mac-IE5.1, clicking on the pulldown menu does nothing for the first few seconds, then when it does come up, the menu items are jumbled and overlapping. The items are in a scrollable menu from the top of the screen to the bottom, and only part of the jumbled menu is scrollable.

Do you think this is:

a) an implementation bug in the browser

b) an issue due to Apple's interface guidelines

c) both

That's just one of the issues I've had with IE.

Any others you hope to see fixed??

--------------------

RosettaStoned

I could create an example if anyone would like to see it.

[ 06-12-2002: Message edited by: RosettaStoned ]</p>

Comments

<strong>On Mac-IE5.1, clicking on the pulldown menu does nothing for the first few seconds, then when it does come up, the menu items are jumbled and overlapping. The items are in a scrollable menu from the top of the screen to the bottom, and only part of the jumbled menu is scrollable.</strong><hr></blockquote>

<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> I really wish I could figure out just what you are talking about. I've never seen my menus "jumbled" as you described. Please do post a picture or provide a link to a page with a popup menu that does this.

As for the speed issue, what are the specs on your Mac? When I click on menus, it rarely takes more than a couple seconds to display.

<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> I really wish I could figure out just what you are talking about. I've never seen my menus "jumbled" as you described. Please do post a picture or provide a link to a page with a popup menu that does this.

My guess is that if Microsoft ignored Apple Interface Guidelines and put the pulldown menus in a controlled scrollable window, we wouldn't have this problem. This probably also causes the lengthy load times. Anyone else deal with this?

Either way, I can't wait to see what MS does with IE 6.0 for Mac. I assume it will be OS X only.

My guess is that if Microsoft ignored Apple Interface Guidelines and put the pulldown menus in a controlled scrollable window, we wouldn't have this problem. This probably also causes the lengthy load times. Anyone else deal with this?

Either way, I can't wait to see what MS does with IE 6.0 for Mac. I assume it will be OS X only.

First, Edit your post, because nobody should try your example undless they are prepared to crash their browser. Trust me... it's a long menu that takes for ever to load and display in both IE and Omniweb.

Second, that is simply poor UI design by anybody's standards. They should use a scorolling list.

Finally, My guess it that it takes Quartz a while to render and anti-alias all the list items and compose the menu bitmap... which must be scrolled. Or... something like that is taking so long.

This was not a fun thread. I lost all my open Windows while searching on Hot Jobs.

<strong>First, Edit your post, because nobody should try your example undless they are prepared to crash their browser. Trust me... it's a long menu that takes for ever to load and display in both IE and Omniweb.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I added a notice to my post, however I've never had it crash a browser. I just tested in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, OmniWeb and Chimera and none crashed. My apologies. Have you tried it on a PC?? You should.

[quote]<strong>Second, that is simply poor UI design by anybody's standards. They should use a scorolling list.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I agree, and the tools I use have both. However, either way, it takes MUCH longer to load on the Mac than the PC.

[quote]<strong>Finally, My guess it that it takes Quartz a while to render and anti-alias all the list items and compose the menu bitmap... which must be scrolled. Or... something like that is taking so long.</strong><hr></blockquote>

It's not Quartz. Try it in OS 9. Same thing. I still think it's just the nature of the long scrolling list, due to Apple Interface Guidelines.

Definately an MS/IE Mac/OS X bungle...on all fronts. I tried the link to the scrolling list on Windows IE 6 here at work and it loaded (DSL) in 20 seconds...and worked the way any scrolling list should.

From the screen capture it's evident that the browser doesn't even create a scroller at all. Seems to be a MS/IE 5 Mac bug...you would think this would be routine in including since on many sites (retail for example) that have long "Choose Your Country" listings. Also with intranet sites.

Or as a web designer/developer for now, wouldn't a scrolling window work instead?

Anyways...hope this issue is addressed to whomever needs it addressed to.

I tried your link in OS 9 on Netscape 6.2.3, and although it probably took 20-30 seconds to load, there were no problems. I also tried it on IE 5.1, adn it took minutes, yes, minutes, to load the page, adn I never could get the menu to actually pull down. huh. at least it didn't crash my browser.